Creating quality jobs by financing an incubator for community-based entrepreneurs

Bornstein & Pearl Food Production Center, Boston, Massachusetts

The Bornstein & Pearl Building in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester was a meat processing facility and major employer in the community for 60 years. When Pearl Meats shut its doors in 2007, those jobs vanished and the building remained vacant for nearly a decade. A flexible early stage loan from our Loan Fund allowed Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation to acquire the building and lease the rehabbed space to CommonWealth Kitchen, an incubator for food-based businesses. The loan from BCLF puts a blighted building back to use and supports opportunities for food entrepreneurs whose production costs might otherwise be prohibitive to getting their businesses off the ground.